Eden Wedding Planner — Technical Architecture

Eden is an AI-enabled wedding planning SaaS product built by Mark Hope and Carly as an internal experiment. The full application was built in approximately three days. This article documents the technical implementation decisions discussed in the ^[1].

Overview

Eden is positioned as a feature-complete alternative to The Knot, designed to cover the full engagement-to-wedding lifecycle. A competitive feature analysis was conducted against existing tools; Eden was intentionally built to match or exceed the combined feature set of all major competitors.

See ^[2] for business context, pricing, and go-to-market strategy.

Vendor Data Pipeline

Source

Vendor data is sourced primarily by scraping The Knot (theknot.com). An earlier approach using the Google Places API was explored — it can return full Google business profiles for any vendor category across the US — but The Knot was preferred for its wedding-specific vendor taxonomy and data richness.

Bot Protection Bypass

The Knot employs bot protection that returns 500 errors against naive scrapers. This was resolved using Bright Data, a residential proxy and web scraping infrastructure provider. Bright Data routes requests through residential IP addresses, effectively bypassing bot detection.

"I found this company called Bright Data and they basically use residential IP addresses and a bunch of other tools. And I signed up for it and we got into the knot and started pulling their vendors."
— Mark Hope, 2026-03-25

General principle applied: If data is publicly visible on a website, it can be scraped. Bot protection raises the technical bar but does not change the fundamental accessibility of public data.

Reusability

The scraping approach and Bright Data integration are reusable patterns for any future project requiring data extraction from bot-protected public websites. See ^[3] if that note exists.

Core Feature Modules

1. Vendor Management

Users can search and manage vendors (florists, caterers, photographers, etc.) sourced from the scraped database. Vendors are browsable by category and location.

2. AI Assistant

An embedded AI assistant has access to the user's full wedding data — contracts, vendor details, payment schedules, and timelines. Users can ask natural-language questions such as:

"When is my florist contract due?"
"When do I have to pay the caterer?"

The assistant retrieves and surfaces the relevant data in response.

3. Day-of Binder (PDF Generation)

Eden auto-generates a "day-of binder" PDF that compiles:
- All vendor contracts
- Payment schedules
- Guest seating assignments
- Full event timeline and logistics

This is designed to be a single printable/shareable document for the wedding day.

4. Seating Chart Tool

An interactive drag-and-drop seating chart builder:
- User specifies number of tables and shape (rectangular, square, or round)
- Tables are auto-generated and rendered on a canvas
- Tables can be repositioned by dragging
- Clicking a table allows assignment of guests to seats

5. Wedding Website Builder

A lightweight website builder that generates a simple, custom wedding website from:
- Couple names
- Wedding date
- A hero photo

The website is hosted as part of the product. Hosting continuity is tied to the $29/year renewal fee after the initial two-year access window.

6. Planning Guides & Vision Board

Guided planning workflows (e.g., rental decisions presented as a 5-question flow with a recommended action)
A vision board for collecting and organizing aesthetic inspiration

7. Guest Communication (Planned)

A future feature to send bulk emails (a few hundred) to guests — e.g., anniversary reminders, pre-wedding logistics updates for destination weddings.

Technology Notes

The frontend uses JavaScript with animated/floating card UI components, interactive elements (open/close toggles), and a no-photo design philosophy that keeps focus on the software itself.
Built without WordPress; the project was partly motivated by frustration with WordPress plugin bloat, database corruption, caching conflicts, and security plugin overhead.
The product was built over a weekend (~3 days of part-time effort), reflecting Mark's increasing velocity with this stack.

Data Portability

Users retain access to their data regardless of subscription status:
- Core planning data: Kept forever; exportable/downloadable at any time.
- Wedding website + vendor data access: Requires the $29/year renewal after the initial two-year window.

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^[3]
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